The Internet is now being used for a number of commercial purposes, including purchase and rental of movie films in different media formats. One such popular website is maintained by Netflix®, where subscribers can search, review and select movie titles (in DVD media format). If a particular title is available, the subscriber's choice is then placed into a rental selection “queue.” During an interactive online session, a subscriber can select a number of titles, and then prioritize them in a desired order for shipment within the selection queue.
During this same sessions, the system can also make recommendations for titles to a user using a well-known recommender algorithm. Such algorithms are commonplace in a number of Internet commerce environments, including at Amazon, CDNOW, and Netflix to name a few. While the details of such algorithms are often proprietary, the latter typically use a number of parameters for determining a user's movie “tastes” so to speak, including demographics, prior movie rentals, prior movie ratings, user navigation statistics, comparison with other users, etc.
After the movie title selection session is over, the system proceeds to ship the desired titles in the order requested by the subscriber. The selections are mailed to the user in special packaging, which include return mailers pre-printed and adapted for such movie media. This minimizes the inconvenience to the subscriber, but there is an indeterminate processing and mailing delay therefore associated with each selection. In most instances, a selection is mailed the same day, but even in such cases, there is typically a three day transaction period associated between the selection, processing, shipment, mail transit and receipt of a particular title.
After shipment, these titles then appear in a list identified essentially as items that are outstanding (i.e., movies that have not yet been returned by the user) within a “titles out” queue. Under the Netflix terms of service, the system places a limit on the number of outstanding titles that a subscriber may have at any one time (typically, a function of the level of service agreement, with more $$/month resulting in more titles). Thus, if the user selects more movies than they can acquire at one time, the remaining movie titles remain as un-shipped items in the rental selection queue. Additional titles in the rental selection queue are only shipped to the user after the system logs a returned item from that same user. This happens automatically, so the user does not need to return to the Netflix website to request the shipment.
A limitation of the aforementioned system is that while the system automatically ships the next items in the rental queue it fails to notify the subscriber when the rental queue is empty, near-empty, or perhaps contains less desirable selections than those that the user would otherwise select if they were aware of more recent available titles. This is undesirable because if the rental queue runs empty, the user is not made aware of the fact that no additional titles are forthcoming. By the time the user discovers that no new titles are in the rental queue, it is now no longer possible for the subscriber to receive a new title any earlier than the minimum delay period noted above (typically three days). This is clearly unattractive from the subscriber's perspective, especially since the latter typically pay a fixed fee per month for the benefits of the Netflix service. In other words, unless they constantly monitor their own rental queue to make sure it is stocked with selections for shipping, subscribers run the risk of being “title-less” for several days.
Aside from the lack of notification noted earlier, another limitation of the Netflix system is that it does not give subscribers any flexible degree of control over their rental selection queue or shipments. For example, subscribers are not given an option of whether a particular title in the rental queue should be shipped; it is automatically shipped, even if they may have changed their minds.
In addition, there is no barter or exchange available within such systems for subscribers. For example, some subscribers may wish a particular title, and others may have such title in a rental selection queue available for shipping. By permitting the subscribers to negotiate directly, demand could be satisfied through another dynamic. Similarly, there is no provision in such systems for identifying stock-out situations for particular subscribers; i.e. situations where a subscriber has a long wait associated with every entry in their rental queue. In such cases, the subscriber's business can be lost, simply because he/she is not receiving even a single title for several days or week. An automatic exchange system, therefore, is greatly needed in this instance, to reduce customer cancellations or defections.
Furthermore, subscribers cannot make optimal use of the recommender system employed in the Netflix system. In other words, while the latter provides recommendations of titles to users while they are online during a particular session, it does not perform any active monitoring of their selections after such time to see if a new selection is now available that may be desirable for consideration in (or automatic insertion into) their rental selection queue. This further means that the Netflix system does not provide any mechanism for monetizing such recommendations to subscribers. Subscribers are not likely to object to a small surcharge for specific rentals that are achieved by virtue of the help of an automatic queue monitoring/recommendation system, particularly when it would mean that they did not have to constantly monitor and update their rental queue.
Thus, from a fundamental perspective, the Netflix system (and other prior art systems like it) do not permit any significant user interaction, control or monitoring of selections presented in a rental queue. While the Netflix system has been operational for several years, the aforementioned limitations have not been appreciated or addressed, and thus remain a continuing problem. Accordingly, there is clearly a long-felt need to remedy the deficiencies of such system, and other systems which employ a type of “queue” for handling customer selections/shipments of products, including rental media.